


Autumn

by peacepen



Series: Wittenberg Time [1]
Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drabble, Gen, Hamlet : sad boi, Hamlet is the only one actually in this, Internal Monologuing, One Shot, Sad boi hours, Spiraling Thoughts, death mention, i think, murder mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacepen/pseuds/peacepen
Summary: It’s funny how autumn is so beautiful when everything is dying.Distraction is never permanent. Every thought you chase away or ignore will come crawling back, tugging away at every distraction you provide until you turn your full attention to it.He continued walking. The leaves crunched under his shoes.





	Autumn

As Hamlet walked, he focused on the way his boots landed on the pavement. The soft thud that was produced when they made contact, the skid when he dragged them backwards, the occasional crunch of leaves underneath his heel. These weren’t the particularly interesting aspects of a walk around campus, in fact for most people they weren’t interesting at all. Why stare at your shoes as you walk, why make note of every noise and texture they come across, when you could watch the sky turn color or observe student life? Distraction is all it was. He couldn’t turn his attention to the scenery or the people surrounding him. All of that would lead him back to the thoughts he was desperately seeking escape from in watching his shoes. 

Distraction is never permanent. Every thought you chase away or ignore will come crawling back, tugging away at every distraction you provide until you turn your full attention to it. 

He continued walking. The leaves crunched under his shoes. 

“Why are there so many leaves here? Isn’t it someone’s job to clean these sidewalks? Has the university deprived this path of custodianship?” 

“Maybe they just keep falling. Maybe they’re recently dead.” 

Dead. 

It’s funny how autumn is so beautiful when everything is dying. The leaves. The will of college students. Fathers. 

Everything circles back. 

The leaves under Hamlet’s boots are dead. They had their time, the trees will grow new leaves if they survive the winter. 

Is he supposed to grow a new father? That’s silly. The only similarity between Hamlet Sr. and autumn leaves is that they are both dead. Cold. Laid to rest in or on the ground, there until they decompose, with only a Hamlet mourning them. 

He supposes, that his family tree will grow new leaves as well. In the form of children. (Is he supposed to have children? Dad would have wanted him to have children.) In the form of Claudius. 

One leaf of a father falls and a woman puts a new one in its place. A new king, a new father, a new growth. 

Is Claudius technically a “new leaf/new father” if he’s not born recently, just moved? Maybe a better metaphor would be the dying leaf is his father and Gertrude grafts a new limb from an old tree to the place he’s left. Forces a limb from a birch tree into their family maple. 

Or maybe, he’s a mistletoe. A parasite onto his immediate family’s life. 

But there’s the kicker, Claudius is not a foreign thing stitched into their family or some leech that has just come. He’s always been there, he’s a part of the tree already, just taking a new place. A limb from another side of the tree grafted into the role of Hamlet’s father and Gertrude’s husband, with the only reason in sight being sin. 

Hamlet continues walking as he works himself into circles over what Claudius would be in relation to the falling leaves, no longer idling on the small details of how his foot meets the ground and what disrupts their meeting, instead fully consumed by his thoughts on his father’s death, on his mother and uncle’s betrayal. Distracted by his grief and angst fueled metaphor, he doesn’t even notice Horatio behind him, speaking in his ear to get his attention. It takes Horatio grabbing his shoulder and shouting his name for him to even look up from his feet.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I'm reposting this! It still hasn't been edited lmao!  
> Again it might become a seriesish of one shots later on! 
> 
> Please if you like it shoot me some prompts on my Tumblr "musicalfucker" and my pillowfort "lemonlesbian"
> 
> Comments and Kudos send me into the astral plane <3


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